[Math] Finding the dimension of the solution space of a differential equation

ordinary differential equations

What's the dimension of the differential equation
\begin{equation}
y''(x)-2xy'(x)-2y(x)=0
\end{equation}
It's easy to verify that the solution space is a vector space, but how to find its dimension without calculating the solutions explicitly. Mathematica 11 tells me that the solution is a vector space of dimension 2 but the solution is kinda complicated.

Best Answer

The solution space of any homogeneous linear differential equation of order $m$ (on an interval in which the Existence and Uniqueness Theorem applies) has dimension $m$. One way to see this is that you can parametrize the solutions by the values of $y, y', \ldots, y^{(m-1)}$ at a particular $x$ in the interval: for any such initial condition there is exactly one solution to the differential equation that satisfies that initial condition.

In this case it's a second order equation, so the dimension is indeed $2$.

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